Bulungula

Bulungula is one of those places that is a bit of a trek to get to, but well worth the effort. To get there, we had to take our tiny hire car down the notorious Coffee Bay road which they're actually resurfacing (yay!) but some areas are equal parts potholes and navigatable road. This inevitably leads to an almost constant laying on of breaks and erratic veering from side to side on the road; happily everyone is forced to travel at such slow speeds accidents don't seem to be much of a problem. After the Coffee Bay road the 'road' turns into a downright track, a punishment we didn't want out little car to endure so we got the spine-grinding shuttle over the last 17 km to the hostel.
Bulungula is essentially a hostel that is 40% owned by a Xhosa community on the Wilderness coast and is a real escape. It's a chance to sit back, listen to the ocean that's on your doorstep, enjoy sleeping in a delicious rondavel, learn a bit of Xhosa (one of the 'clicking' language), meet a few community members and gorge on amazing stews.
We did a tour with Melendinga, the local herbalist, and Conjuloola, our interpreter. We got to visit Melendinga's house/workshop, ask him any questions we could possibly think of and he rounded things off with a visit in the forest to show us where he collects some of his herbs. A few favorites included a root that could ward off bad luck, a bark used for guilt (we weren't entirely sure if it was to alleviate guilt, confuse others so they wouldn't think you were guilty, or both), and this tree that was used for tooth brushing before they used the plastic ones (it worked really well).
We'd also planned a morning of fishing but unfortunately Mr Z who leads the trips was unwell or didn't want to go out that morning because it never eventuated. Instead we spent the morning poking around some tidal pools and generally relaxing.